Save us John Connor!
The fight between humans and robots has been raging on the silver screen and on the printed page for decades. In the 1940s and 1950s, Isaac Asimov wrote a series of short stories that would become “I, Robot,” and introduce the “3 Laws of Robotics” to the world. Computer power at the time was in its infancy, but some visionaries recognized that we needed some rules to protect humanity from its own creations.
Fast forward to January 2016 and to Davos, Switzerland and the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum where a panel of subject matter experts discussed the prospect of robots going to war. They all agreed that while artificial intelligence is not quite at the level of science fiction yet, robots and computers have shown a great ability to interact with their environments (driver-less cars) and significant strategic ability (IBMs Deep Blue and Watson). Combat robots will soon be more than a drone tethered to a human (UAVs and bomb robots), but weapons able to identify and engage targets on their own.
It’s reported that over 40 countries are currently working on killer robots, and there are no rules in place to govern their use. The United States is the only country to have regulations in place since2012, placing a 10 year ban on developing autonomous killing machines. (The regulations do contain many loopholes though.) The dangers the experts highlighted were that these robots have a much lower cost of entry when compared to nuclear and chemical weapon programs, and could be more easily obtained by less than rational actor (ISIS, AQI, etc.).
As computing power rapidly increases (Moore’s Law) how long before we might run into those sci-fi scenarios? In fiction, there was always a protagonist to save us. 1960s comic books gave us Magnus, Robot Fighter. In 1984, we found out that John Connor would save us from the Terminators (but that story line went off the rails a bit.) Harrison Ford (as Rick Dekker) showed that the dystopian future had a police force to deal with rogue autonomous constructs in Blade Runner. Even Keanu Reeves got in on the robot fighting action when Bill and Ted defeated their evil robot doppelgangers during their Bogus Journey (a robot fighting role that Mr. Reeves was actually believable in). The true future of combat machines will most likely look more like WOPR (War Games, 1983) and ARIIA (Eagle Eye, 2008), by sending out swarms of smaller robots. It is doubtful that the future will also give us a David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) or Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) to save humanity in the nick of time.
As the experts in Davos discussed in January, we do need some rules and moral responsibility in the creation of killer robots. But the experts were also quick to point out that this technology could soon be produced by groups not playing by the same rules, and that conflict in general is a very morally ambiguous environment. If you are on the side of a conflict that is losing (state to state war, terrorism, organized crime), are you going to hold back, follow the rules, and take the moral high ground? The simple solution of John Connor saving the day is easier to imagine, but the reality will surely be more complicated. We might be on the door step of the next arms race, where attack robots bring about defense robots, which inspire further attack robot innovation, etc. Technological innovations have often come with unintended consequences. The challenge for both innovators and policy makers will be to encourage responsible use of technology, while preparing to respond to new potential threats. At a minimum, I just know that I will sleep well at night, because I have Old Glory Robot Insurance.
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